St John's Cemetery - St John's in the Vale, Cumbria
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N 54° 35.558 W 003° 04.460
30U E 495196 N 6049463
A Cemetery In St. John's In The Vale Church Yard, Cumbria.
Waymark Code: WM17XV0
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 04/18/2023
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A Cemetery In St. John's In The Vale Church Yard, Cumbria.
St John's Church in the valley of St John's in the Vale was built in 1845, replacing an earlier church, and re-using some of its fabric. The man who was given the job was a local stonemason who had built many of the area’s dry stone walls and dwellings.
"Originally, the pass served as a corpse road. Anyone who died in the valley had their coffin carried to Crosthwaite for burial. In 1767, the chapel was granted the right to bury its own dead in its own chapel yard. It wasn’t until nine years later that the first burial took place here. A local superstition held that the Devil was waiting to claim the soul of the first interred, and the belief was so strong as to compel all ageing locals to insist they be carried to Crosthwaite when their time came (unless, by chance, someone else had beaten them to the first lot). According to Richardson, that “someone else” was an ailing vagrant who dropped dead on the road. Rather than being bemoaned as burden by the parish saddled with his burial costs, the poor soul met with a hero’s funeral.
In the churchyard, opposite the east window, stands an old gravestone in the shape of a Celtic cross, its edges softened by moss and its face mottled with lichen. The circle at the centre of the cross holds a Christogram, intwining the letters “I”, “H” and “S” into a gothic motif—iota-eta-sigma—the first three letters in the Greek for Jesus."
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"St John in the Vale's Church burial ground, Threlkeld
The GPR holds 292 grave and 527 person records for the burial ground.
There have been 151 requests for photographs from the burial ground.
The latest details for the burial ground were added on 12 August 2012."
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